1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument which is effectively applied to, for example, an electronic wind instrument, an electronic keyboard instrument, or an electronic stringed instrument and, more particularly, to a designation technique of musical tone parameters.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, along with rapid advance of electronics and digital techniques, electronic musical instruments utilizing these techniques have been developed. As one of these electronic musical instruments, an electronic wind instrument is known. The electronic wind instrument detects a breath or lip operation by an operator (player) as an electrical signal using a breath or lip sensor arranged at its mouthpiece portion, thus finely controlling a tone volume or pitch of an electronically generated musical tone. The electronic wind instrument can generate a musical tone matching with sensitiveness of a player.
As the electronic wind instrument described above, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,767,833; 2,301,184; 2,868,876; 3,429,976; 3,439,106; and 3,938,419 are known. Of these electronic wind instruments, those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,767,833 and 2,301,184 have an arrangement wherein a pitch of a musical tone generated in response to a breath operation at a mouthpiece portion can be finely changed or modified, by changing a biting strength of the mouthpiece portion.
However, in the above conventional electronic wind instruments, although a pitch of a musical tone to be generated can be variably controlled by changing the biting strength of the mouthpiece portion, the biting strength and the pitch of a musical tone to be controlled merely have a given relationship. For this reason, when the biting strength and the pitch of a musical tone have a proportional relationship, if the biting strength is gradually increased, the pitch of a musical tone is also gradually increased. On the other hand, when the biting strength and the pitch of a musical tone have an inverse proportional relationship, if the biting strength is gradually increased, the pitch of a musical tone is gradually decreased. Thus, it is impossible to switch the relationship between the biting strength and the pitch of a musical tone during a breath performance. More specifically, if a proportional relationship between the biting strength and the pitch of a musical tone in a first half portion of a music is preset, it is impossible to set an inverse proportional relationship between the biting strength and the pitch in a second half portion of the music. Further, upon switching of the relationship, a tone color cannot be switched at the same time. For this reason, a performance with abundant expressions cannot be attained.